Shapes

Flowers

The flowers will come again.

Lake

I made this with oil pastel. I was again off on my search for a perfect way of putting down colours. The oil pastel isn't quite flat but I am liking the result - sometimes! I don't know which way things will go. I love what can be achieved with digital work but I still tend to search around in case something else is waiting.

Although this is lake like, with a white, reflecting water I was thinking "above and beyond" as I was doing it, so maybe it is also a place above the sky.

Note on shape: more individual shapes than I would have put down usually.

Swoop

This is an image from the summer when I was having a fixation with yellow/yellow ochre and couldn't get the colour out of my head. The height of summer, just before harvest when the colours are about to turn towards autumn any moment but that fact will be disguised for a while yet. The "swoop" shapes have a positive feel for me: columns of beautiful cloud, the trail of a plane, a jump in the air, the fair, a paper lantern lit on a summer evening.

Pod

This is one of the first images I wanted to make in this recent lot of work - I was dreaming of screen prints then, but... maybe one day.

Wave

A lace-edged wave finds its way up the beach, foaming a path onto new sands. It reaches a height, begins to lull and creep back to be met by another frothy companion, taking its part in the woven, scalloped tide.


The colours in this are from shells, the pinks in slipper limpets and the blue greys of mussel shells.

Moonlight on the sea

This is an image that I had a huge struggle with but from the point of view of science I am going to put it here anyway and explain! It began with the striped land in pink and caramel/beige and actually the left hand land may have been striped too but I did away with those. The colours that followed quickly became about night. Living near the sea we quite often drive to Mudeford Quay at night, especially if we see a beautiful moon in the sky. However, I had a long battle with these reflections. At first I made them straight (bottom left) and only put in some distancing gaps. I also tried the solid path as in the image on bottom right but I still wasn't happy - the sea has more movement than this even on the stillest night. I had decided against putting in the perspective truly because this was more about the path of the moonlight itself. Finally I made a wedge shape and added distance between the nearer reflections. These seem the most suitable to me as they imply more movement but I am still hesitant on this one. Perhaps the reflections are too uniform or just simply too narrative. Anyway, onward.


The night sky is warm as it meets the water - the sea is placid: tonight a dappled "flup, flup" the only sound as it meets the wall of the quay. A scarcely broken reflection of moonlight paints its echo into the summer evening, a pathway to step to the horizon.